S.F. AIDS care leads nation, Aug. 3, 1987

Updated 9:06 am, Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In 1937, J. Edgar Hoover verified a grim story about an Alcatraz prisoner involving an ax.

In 1937, J. Edgar Hoover verified a grim story about an Alcatraz prisoner involving an ax.

Photo: Handout, Sfc

S.F. AIDS care leads nation, Aug. 3, 1987

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Here's a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle's archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

1987

Aug. 3: The refrain comes from public health officials and AIDS doctors from New York City to Los Angeles, from Houston to Chicago - nobody has an AIDS program on par with San Francisco. Almost every day some team of health experts troops through San Francisco General Hospital to learn how to imitate what has become known internationally as "the San Francisco model" of AIDS care. The coming years, however will present the greatest challenge to San Francisco's health care system since the great earthquake and fire of 1906, requiring an unprecedented commitment of medical resources and assiduous planning. AIDS experts paint this grim scenario for 1991:

Nearly 15,000 San Franciscans have been stricken with the disease and 10,000 have died.

San Francisco General is so filled with AIDS patients that ambulances with non-emergency patients are diverted to other hospitals. Although intended as a place for non-acute patients, the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in the Richmond District has become a modern charnel house with all its 350 beds filled with the dying.

Although this is not an optimistic prognostication, neither is it the most pessimistic. As one prominent hospital administrator says privately, "We could have people dying in the streets."

1962

Aug. 1: It's legal to drive 65 miles an hour in the Broadway and Stockton tunnels, the police committee of the Board of Supervisors learned with shocked surprise yesterday.

"Some people have been going through the Broadway tunnel at 85 and the average speeds are from 42 to 52," city traffic engineer Frank Marconi told the committee. In the Stockton tunnel, he said, average speeds are 32 to 37. But where there are no intersections the State maximum limit prevails unless the county sets a lower limit, he said. So 65 miles an hour is legal. The committee recommended that it set a limit of 40 miles an hour in the Broadway tunnel and 25 for the Stockton tunnel.

1937

July 29: A story of horror, almost unbelievable, came out of the prison fortress, Alcatraz, last night. The story was verified by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Department of Justice at Washington D. C. It rivaled in grimness some of the tales of Poe. One of the desperate band of men who make up the strange company on the "Rock" figured as a star performer in a gruesome episode that shook the bay prison to its foundations. The prisoner, Rufe Persful, said to be a nationally known bad man, in some manner unexplained, obtained possession of an ax a night or so ago. That ax had a razor edge. The story goes that Persful, holding the ax in his right hand, deliberately placed his left hand on a support and, with a sweeping stroke, severed the hand. Then he is said to have handed the ax to another prisoner with the plea:

"Strike off my right hand!" The other prisoner, horrified, is said to have summoned guards who rushed Persful to the prison hospital. The motive of the prisoner remained unexplained. Whether he had gone mad with loneliness, whether he had sought death, or whether he hoped to gain some unvoiced objective by his spectacular action, was a mystery. Warden James A. Johnston said Persful would not be punished.

Aug. 3: Maritime workers and longshoremen staged a half-hour "stop work" protest yesterday in all Pacific Coast ports against German and Italian intervention in Spain and "to show solidarity with Spanish workers." There were no ceremonies and no demonstrations outside the stoppage of work on all docks and ships in the harbor. It was estimated about 10,000 members of unions affiliated with the Maritime Federation of the Pacific took part in the protest in San Francisco.

1912

Aug. 3: Relative to the use of the term "Frisco, Cal.," to which the Collector of Customs took exception, the Secretary of the Treasury has issued an order to the railroad companies and all others concerned that the use of the word "Frisco" is prohibited. The letter of the Secretary of the Treasury to the transportation companies and the manufacturers of the seals and locks on bonded baggage contains the following language:

"We have to advise you that objection has been made to the use of the term 'Frisco' on the seals for the reason that the word 'Frisco' lacks distinctiveness and dignity, and there are upwards of ten villages named Frisco. The term 'Frisco' as a name for San Francisco employed by non-residents is objected to by a majority of the citizens of San Francisco and is never used by them. The term has been condemned by the press and civic organizations and the campaign against the employment thereof has progressed to such an extent that the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway commonly known and widely advertised the 'Frisco' line, was obliged by popular opinion to take that term off its advertising and office window display in that city." {sbox}

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